Dementor
by dimestoredramatic
Summary: He thinks you'll last forever. Even the stars burn out eventually, you tell him.  warnings: implied abuse, depression.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

* * *

><p>He offers up "I love you"s like the words cost him nothing, and you drink them in like the pathetic, attention-starved fool you've always been. He offers smiles and laughter, cheery words and affectionate nicknames that provide stark contrast to your thin-lipped grimaces, your sharp anxieties, your twitchy, unconscious recollections of unfavoured hands upon your skin. You often worry about what's in this for him; why he'd want a relationship with sad, inadequate you, his former enemy. This is all too good to be true, you've never been more certain of anything, but he seems to think you'll last forever. Even stars burn out eventually, you tell him, but all he says is he's never been one for analogies.<p>

You don't know when this crazy excuse for a relationship began, when sheer hate shifted to passion, and anger shifted to – whatever it is you have together. You know he'd call it love, but…

… but between Father and Mother, and Aunt Bella and Greyback, and all the other fanatic, vicious Death Eaters that have forced themselves uncomfortably into your life, you're not sure that such a thing can truly exist, or if it does, that it is all powerful, as fools like Harry and his mentor, Dumbledore, always seem to preach. Even with Harry, that beacon of optimism and inspiration who claims to love you more than anything, you still often feel yourself lapsing into cynicism, dwelling on memories of puckered skin and bright rivulets of crimson blood. _Pure_ crimson blood.

You don't feel like you have pure blood, no matter what Father insists, or Aunt Bella, or the Dark Lord; you feel tainted, tainted by Greyback's bestial touch, polluted with Aunt Bella's familiar, incestuous grip. You are a _plaything_, and you can't understand why Harry Bloody Potter can't realize this, can't understand how befouled and unworthy you are.

Inexplicably, Harry Potter seems to care. He cares about your pallor, and the thinning of your flaxen hair. He cares about your scars, kissing them and worrying about them, instead of shielding his eyes from the hideous disfigurement they create. He cares that there are indigo shadows under your eyes and midnight splotches of pain about your torso, dusted over the scars. He cares that he can see the broken angle of your ribs under your taut, translucent skin.

You hate yourself for wanting him to care, for basking in the feeling of someone, anyone finally caring. You hate yourself for believing him, believing that he loves you, and you hate yourself for not giving the most selfless person you know more credit. You hate that with each failed attempt to cheer you up, your sadness weighs all the more heavily on his shoulders.

You are a _Dementor_, his Dementor, leeching happiness from his life with your desperate, unhappy neediness.

Merlin, how you hate yourself.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: No matter how many of these I write, I will never own Harry Potter any more or less.

Part Two, this one focusing on Harry.

* * *

><p>Ron and Hermione always tell you that you have a "saving people thing," that you are helpless to resist the morose and the wounded. Hermione goes on at length about your need to be a hero, and insists that your attraction to Draco is simply a manifestation of this need in a post-Voldemort world that no longer has any use for the obsolete heroics of Harry Potter.<p>

She has other psychological theories, too. She theorizes that you, courageous magnet for danger, like the prospect of a forbidden romance, and who better to enact such a romance with than Draco Malfoy?

You disagree. Somehow, when confronted with Hermione's theories, you can never quite find the words to explain yourself, to explain you and him, but you _know_ what it's like between you and Draco, and it's not the product of some deep-seated psychological issue.

Yes, when you're with him you feel the strong urge to protect, or to attack those that have harmed him in the past. You also, however, feel a desire to make him laugh, a desire to make him smile. You want to live with him until you're both wizened old men, faces alive with too many laugh lines. You want to be able to tell people at your wedding, "When I was young, I rejected Draco's proffered hand of friendship. When I proposed to him, I was worried he'd refuse to take my hand in marriage. Until I die, I'll be glad he didn't."

You can never quite figure out how to tell Hermione that Draco is like finding out you're a wizard or riding a broomstick for the first time, but one day, you say to her, "I'd use my first kiss with Draco as a memory to fight off Dementors. And it would work."

Although this silences her for a while, it leaves you feeling guilty, not because all of that isn't true, but because you neglect to mention, and are reluctant to acknowledge, even to yourself, that this happiness, this _elation_ that comes with loving Draco is tinged slightly with something else: worry. Worry for his health, his happiness, and his safety, but also another sort of worry, worry that he'll leave you, or that you'll inadvertently do something to break his already fractured state of mind; worry that this beautiful thing won't last.

You think Draco is breathtaking, although you know he'd disagree. He looks at himself and thinks _"worthless,"_ thinks _"Death Eater"_ and _"evil."_ You wish he could see himself through your eyes, see how lovely and worthy he is. He thinks you're foolish for loving him and you think it would be foolish for anyone not to love him.

You think he'd be even more beautiful if he took care of himself and acquired some self-confidence. He could be stunning if he weren't chasing a skeleton dream and if he'd stop looking into funhouse mirrors.

Hermione's right, you do want to take care of him, to "fix" him, but she's wrong in that he's not a project. He's not something you'll cast to the side once mended and you're not in it just for him to see you as his hero; you're in this to make him as happy as possible for the rest of his life.

His happiness is worth way more than anyone thinking you're a hero; Merlin help you, but you love him more than anything.


End file.
